Dried Fruit and Poisonous Berries
by Rockkit
Summary: She wasn't very comfortable like this. Her legs were beneath her, knees pressed against the ground, her palms flat and level on the cool concrete surface. Marvel practically danced toward the weapons and didn't seem to notice her hiding beneath the camouflage table. It was completely harmless to watch.


Something tight gripped her shoulder and she thrashed from the hand on her skin, her cold blue eyes snapping open in a single, rushed instant. The woman above her was unfamiliar and odd-looking, a soft pink color standing out on her unnatural features. "Marissa, darling." The escort breathed the words from a foot above her face. "Marissa, let go."

Marissa felt her chest churn air; felt it rise and fall as her eyes scraped the room for every inch of evidence she could collect. "W-who . . . ?" she asked the woman who was craned over her. The escort's arms and body were wrapped in skin-tight silver fabric, her light brown hair dotted with the same spring flowers that bloomed from her right thigh and around her neck, encircling her rounded face.

The escort had a startled look in her golden eyes. When Marissa noticed the grip she had on the woman's forearm, it made a little more sense to her. "I am your escort, dear. Simply your escort, that is all."

With a jerk, she threw her arms off the woman and felt them fall back against silken copper sheets. She couldn't catch her breath. "T-t-time?"

"Time? Oh, yes, time. What is it now . . . ?" The escort straightened and looked to the corner of the room with wide golden woman had her hands clasped together at her stomach, her jeweled nails in bold view. "Why, dear, it's time for breakfast! You've nearly missed it."

Marissa felt a sigh leave her lips and her eyes were starting to flutter shut again. She moved her cheek snugly into the copper sheets.

"Why, girl, I hope this isn't about last night," Marissa heard her sigh. Her eyes looked lost in a daydream when Marissa raised her head to look. "At the chariots the two of you didn't look too terrible, alright? The wardrobe malfunction was a large mistake on part of your stylist, but I suppose . . ." The escort tapped a few fingertips on her chin in thought. "Well, there is nothing we can do about it now so we might as well go on with our day, correct?"

Marissa's eyes just grew even wider at the woman. She knew a sharp hit to the throat would do it, but she wasn't willing to kill this early in the games for the sole purpose of getting someone to shut up. So she nodded, though she wasn't sure what was being asked of her.

The escort leaned slightly towards her and narrowed her golden eyes at the fox. "Correct?" she repeated.

Marissa gulped. The woman smelled of sweet pea soup, a Capitol dish her family was never rich enough to purchase the ingredients to make. "Correct."

"Good." The escort gave a coy smile and flattened her silver dress with swiping palms. "Maybe you should listen closer, girl, it's good for you." Marissa didn't want to have to take orders from this lady anymore. Who did she think she was, her godmother?

Whoever it was, she responded to the name "Ema" when it rang from the darkened hallway. The voice was Capitolian, asking about breakfast food preferences.

"Oh, miss Finch will be right there, she's just gotten to a rather late start," the woman responded. With a few clicks of her heels, she crossed the room. "What do you want, dear? Coffee? Juice?"

Marissa lifted herself onto her elbows and tucked a tendril of scarlet away from her widened blue eyes. "Juice . . . would be nice."

The escort rolled her eyes. "Oh, just order her one of those white frappuccinos, Thomas, she'll love it," she spoke into the hallway. Just before she stepped out of the room, something in Marissa's expression prompted her to reassure the fox. "You'll love it. "

Then like the doors of the Justice Building in Five; the doors of the foster home in her small town; the door seemed to hold her breath for her as it slid shut, not a sound being made in its wake.

"Love it," Marissa echoed to herself. She thought the words over and only a few muffled voices managed to creep in from the dining room before the door clicked shut in the silence. Marissa slid from underneath the silken bed sheets and worked the stiffness from her toes; her fingers. A few moments and water was rushing over her body in warm waves, shampoo working its way into her roots before it was rinsed away and dried at the hurried press of a button.

The shower fog pressed kisses to her alabaster skin as she looked into the bathroom mirror, her naked body a canvas on which her stylists were wanting to paint, but couldn't. Well, she might have been wrong, however. It was her first training day and Zosimos, the loudest of the two stylists assigned to her, might argue just that. "It's your very first, Marissa," he might say. Then he'd poke the quieter stylist into adding, "just once, Marissa," before he would press a hanger of clothes to her figure to see how Marissa might look if he managed to get her to wear them.

Marissa watched her own eyes widen in the mirror. They were a cool blue, like Kenneth's were before she left him at the foster home. The color of her eyes were the only thing she had in common with her friend, and Marissa was fine with it being that way. She thought of his short blonde hair that was straighter than hers and of the way that, unlike herself, he would never allow himself to cry as she had on the train. At least not in front of his district partner.

But she decided not to focus on that thought for very long. Her face was already reddening and was warm, like how it got when her adoptive parents squeezed her tight before her train ride to the Capitol. She remembered how stiff she was in Ethan Finch's arms and the kiss his poor wife pressed to her face before they were ushered out of the small, electrified room. If she wanted to, she could have squirmed away from their touches and made her way off to a corner of the battered sofa couch to curl up in a ball. Maybe, for the first time, she'd welcomed their touches. But something about that notion evoked a shudder that Marissa had to work from her shoulders in a wiggle.

She didn't want to trust the Finches. And perhaps that was unfair of her, considering that they cared enough about her to provide for her what little resources they could. Watery, pasteurized milk and dried up old bread cookies from that little shop down the road Mrs. Finch would take her to late every Tuesday. Besides Kenneth, they were the only people she'd ever known to truly care for her, and maybe that was why she continued to think about them. Worried, she told herself. I am worried for Ethan and Marge and for Kenneth. If anyone asked, she wouldn't be mentioning Kenneth.

The blue button on the bathroom wall, she had come to realize, was a helpful thing because dozens of soft copper curls would fall around the edges of her face the instant she pushed it. By the time it was pushed, she'd only been left to pin back the bangs from her face and to analyze her solemn smile in the bathroom mirror. She'd use that smile today. When the time came and it was expected, that was the smile she'd use.

Her stomach grumbled. She pressed a hand to the plain of flesh and searched the bathroom with vivid blue eyes for a stack of clothes anywhere. On her bed suspiciously sat a pile for her taking. She left her bedroom wearing black leggings and slippers with her cloudy blue top.

Capitolian chatter echoed through her mind louder with each of her footsteps toward the dining room. It made to mask the trained silence of her footsteps. She'd never seen half of the dishes lined across the table, or the dark wood, for that matter. Her thumbs spun around eachother and she answered the newfound silence with her smiling facade, realizing with a deft quickness what they wanted to hear. So she said, "Morning." A few of the people turned to her with grins on their colorful faces; others were preoccupied with their chatter.

She glanced around for someone to sit beside. Her partner was quiet enough. He had his eyes trained on his plate so determinedly that when she sat beside him, she thought that determination might have only been an attempt to tear his eyes away from her. Her partner's stylist was beaming past a mouthful of a flaky biscuit. "Mmh. Morning, my dear." He said more things.

Marissa made sure to keep her smile as she tuned away his words past a mouthful of circular bread, odd stuff that had syrup smeared all over when she found it on her plate. It was cold. She sipped from a steaming mug of a sweet and energizing substance that brought alertness to her mind as well as a chill in her bones. Her escort was smiling at her from across the table. There was a tiredness in her eyes that, to Marissa, was unmistakable. She'd seen it too many times in the eyes of power plant workers - too many times in the foster home - to let the image slip away.

Marissa's Kevlar training outfit was too snug when her stylist dressed her in it. It was labeled with exactly three fives - one at the nape of her neck, the others plastered to the sides of her arms just below her shoulders. It wouldn't be comfortable, running and skipping around. She'd train her knowledge today until the suit was broken into.

The elevator ride to the training room was a strange and quiet one. Her district partner was shuffling on his feet after they both reached to press the button. Their hands had brushed. Marissa watched her escort elbow the mentor, and she sighed inwardly as Ema's eyes glittered over a wide smile.

She pressed the button. As they lifted away, Marissa hardly saw the way their mentor's grim eyes traveled after them. She let out a huff, quiet, that her partner couldn't hear even in the dead silence. That glance had been her warning.

District 4 was gone in a flash of decorative wall nets and anchors. Marissa couldn't help feeling that the elevator was like a rocket with its silent speed. She was more than used to elevators - they were in every supermarket and shop in District 5 - but the momentum and smoothness were harrowing to her.

She wonder how fast it'd be, going through that metal chute into the arena.

District Three had cameras in their hallway, and decorative weapons of gold were hung on the walls of floor two. Marissa's district partner took a deep breath of air beside her. Not because District One was next, she assumed, but because the elevator had begun to slow down. A mess of diamonds and jewels stared back at her through the glass, hanging from the ceiling like stalactites. The doors slid open to a pair of tributes, one blonde and the other about six feet tall with hair the color of fresh soil.

They were laughing with each other and stood easily in front of the elevator, each with their grins healthy and wide.

The girl, called Glimmer, was the first to step in. Marissa's partner had already made room for her. With her smile wide and a laugh in her emerald eyes, the District One female didn't seem to notice Five's tributes.

The boy was loud with an obnoxious grin as he stepped in beside his partner tribute. He jabbed his finger into a button without putting much care into it, and Marissa stifled a snort when she heard his partner call him 'Marvel'.

Glimmer clutched an arm over her belly in laughter and swatted at Marvel's shoulder as she sputtered at him, "So - so then what happened?"

The elevator jerked upward and Marissa watched Marvel step back into her with the movement. He looked cramped without the room, and her feet were planted firmly on the ground as he bumped into her. Marissa wouldn't give in and treat these Careers like she owed them something. Marvel seemed to notice her stubbornness, but it hardly fazed him. "Oh, he just took it and left," he said, answering Glimmer's question. "Without a care in the world, his ass was just _gone." _

Glimmer caved over with laughter, her sharp laughs bouncing within the elevator's glass walls. Marvel grinned to himself. For a second, his mouth fell open and a word looked just about to leave his lips before his eyes found Marissa, who stood below him and was so close, there was hardly an inch of space between them. She raised her eyes at him, not bothering to exert the energy to glare at him with proper arrogance. His eyes were surprisingly uncaring, and his gaze flitted away before his grin drew wide and his voice flooded into the elevator again.

Marissa could tell that she was starting to hate him already. The smirk on his face; the arrogance in his straight, lithe back. He had his arms crossed and his eyes seemed to be hooded in a constant expression of nonchalance. _'That Five girl 'll make an easy bloodbath kill,'_ Marissa found herself thinking for him.

But such a notion - whether or not Marvel had thought it - was ridiculous. Marissa wouldn't let anyone get close enough to _try_.

An electronic sound blinked into the elevator and the doors slid apart. A breath of cold air washed over the tributes. "You ready?" Marvel asked his partner, a cold smirk frozen over his lips. Glimmer was already skipping away, heading to join the small monster girl from two at the station with the maces.

Marissa was too distracted to smile at Marvel's failure. All around her, there were wonders of things she'd never seen; technology she'd never felt, weapons and equipment she'd never even heard of. Stations stood dauntingly in every corner of the room. Racks and racks of weapons and ropes were lined up in rows, alive with tributes who had brutal intent. Every station was completely open to be used. Or, in the words of a Career, 'played with'.

Marissa assumed that Marvel had already made his alliance. He opened his wide arms to their fullest potential length, sauntering from the mouth of the elevator with his chin lifted and teeth bared in a grin. "_Cato,_ darling!" He sang. Yards away, a brutal, blonde-haired potato sack of muscle narrowed blue eyes at him.

Marissa felt her lip curl at him, her plucked scarlet brows furrowed in confusion. A blonde-haired potato sack of muscle glared at Marvel from his position at the station with the swords. He had his hands clenched into fists, and his knuckles paled. Around them, the skin of his hands grew an impressive shade of red. Cato, from Two.

The dummy before him had been impaled twelve times in its chest and shoulders. The sword that was clenched in the large boy's fist came to Marissa as no surprise.

A shiver slid over the base of Marissa's thin neck. It worked its way slowly past her shoulders, chilling and beating down her resolve with cowardice; fear. Marissa suppressed it. By the way Marvel sauntered toward the spears, that grin still plastered - wider now - across his face, she concluded that Marvel had finished making a meal out of himself and that he had something hidden up his sleeve. Marissa caught the flitting eyes of a tribute and ducked. She caught her breath from behind the camouflage table and honed in on Marvel with her cool blue eyes.

She wasn't very comfortable like this. Her legs were beneath her, knees pressed against the ground, her palms flat, level on the cool concrete surface. How comfortable she was hardly mattered

It was completely harmless to_ watch_.

Marvel practically danced toward the weapons. A grin was spread wide over his lips as he neared the rack of spears, and Marissa kept eyes on him, hiding. She watched the way his grin melted when his fingers curled around a spear. A callous, arrogant smirk.

With harsh speed, Marvel swung his arm. Several dummies were speared through the middle within the first few minutes, and one was even knocked down with a thud that collected a few of the eyes that had been scattered around the room. A small girl with fuzzy hair was peeking at him from a few yards behind the spear rack.

Marissa had let her eyes grow wide at One's tribute, and she found it difficult to take them away. Marvel was merciless, maybe. Perhaps he wouldn't be quite so unfazed about things when he had a blade angled at his throat.

She could imagine herself being the one to kill him ... blood trickling from the metal; sunlight glinting at its edge as the gleam of life drained slowly from Marvel's eyes.

Marissa's partner had set off toward the fire-making station where the pair from Twelve were being directed to roll sticks briskly between their palms. And her previous thoughts - Marissa tried her best to ignore them. Her ideas were too scattered and sickly as it was.

She carried her eyes to someplace else. A large machine with a glowing screen and glistening blue keypads was among the first to grab hold of her attention. Leaves and strange seeds were pictured on the front of it. The vixen-haired tribute from Five found herself gravitating toward the device, and it provided good cover; a distraction from her endeavors and her demons.

Plant Identification might be useful.


End file.
